Question: In your Q&A section you answered a question about
Sacred Tradition. The person who asked the question cited 2
Thessalonians 2:15 to establish the reason for believing in Sacred
Tradition. You provided an answer that I found helpful, however, I have
a question to ask. You cited Trent and Vatican II to show how the Roman
Catholic Church defines the concept of Sacred Tradition. After that you
stated that, "Tradition is a body of undefined teachings..."
My question is how did your citations of Trent and Vatican II lead you
to restate the Catholic position using the word “undefined”?

Answer: Tradition is a body of undefined teaching; the contents
and limits of this teaching are not available for inspection or study.
This is in contrast to the Holy Scriptures, which anyone can read and
examine for himself. If I claim that a particular teaching is biblical,
you can verify or refute my claim by checking out the Bible.

But when the Catholic magisterium claims that such doctrines as the
papal supremacy, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption are found
in Tradition, no one can prove or disprove that claim. How can you?

Take a second look at those two references:

"The Council (of Trent) clearly perceives that this truth and
rule are contained in the written books and unwritten traditions which
have come down to us, having been received by the apostles from the
mouth of Christ himself, or from the apostles by the dictation of the
Holy Spirit, and have been transmitted as it were from hand to
hand."

"Sacred Tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ
the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the apostles, and hands it on to their
successors in its integrity."

Notice, first of all that traditions are “unwritten”. You cannot
go to a library and read them for yourself. (By the way, the writings of
the church Fathers are NOT Tradition; they are called “witnesses” to
Tradition - and I may add, very ‘fallible’ witnesses, for the
Fathers often make mistakes and contradict one another and the teaching
of the modern church). So where can you go to discover the contents of
Tradition? Well, you can only go to the magisterium, i.e. the Catholic
bishops (who claim to be the successors of the apostles and to whom the
apostolic traditions were supposedly transmitted ‘from hand to
hand’). But notice that the same bishops, who appeal to Tradition as
their divine source of their teaching, are themselves that same
Tradition since they had supposedly received the unwritten teachings
from their predecessors.

I hope you can see that this concept of Tradition is only a proud and
empty claim. Ask a Roman Catholic a simple question - Is Tradition equal
or more extensive than the teaching of the Holy Scriptures? Are there
some vital Christian doctrines that are taught in Tradition and not in
the Bible? The different answers you get - some say yes, others say no.

Contrary to the position of many modern Catholic apologists
who assert the material sufficiency of Scripture, many conservative
Catholics maintain the opposite. For example, St Alphonsus wrote:
"These traditions, which are the unwritten word of God, have the
same authority as the written word of God . . . Traditions are necessary
that belief may be given to many articles of faith . . . about which
nothing at all exists in scriptures, so that these truths have come to
us only from the font of tradition" [S. Alphonsus, De fidei
veritate. Cap. VI, n. 30. S. Alphonsi Opera dogmatica (Rome, 1903),
292]. Or consider this, "Tradition is a source of revelation
distinct from Scripture, and goes beyond the data of Scripture. This is
a dogma of faith from the Council of Trent and from the Vatican
Council" [ G. Van Noort, Dogmatic Theology, Vol. III, The Sources
of Revelation (Tr. J. Castelot, S.S., and W. Murphy, S.S., Westminster,
Md., 1960), 146].

Catholics don’t even agree on the
extent of 'Sacred Tradition, let alone its content.

The concept of Tradition is a convenient excuse for the Roman
Catholic magisterium to teach whatever they desire as if it is the Word
of God, and without any accountability whatsoever. It is useless to
protest that such teachings as papal infallibility and the Marian dogmas
are absent from the pages of Scripture and even the writings of the
early church. Tradition is their carte blanche. Tradition is the
magician’s hat, out of which the Roman magisterium can pull any new
theological rabbit and call it the Word of God!

Copyright Dr Joe Mizzi.
Permission to copy and distribute this article without textual changes. <
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